Kick Ass Weekend of Independence

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

Yes, another year has come & passed... and America is now another year older and... maybe more senile? I don't know... that's another blog out there. This blog is about my weekend more than any of that controversial stuff. There's is NO controversy... that this weekend was pretty cool. True... there was some unfortunately news the week before with my Wingman's father passing away... and my stepmom's mother as well... but that was last week. So without further ado... here it is...

Friday was the official holiday... and we decided to spend it by enjoying a 4th of July Barbecue in San Jose at the home of a friend of Izzy's from childhood that we'll call Bob Burgers. He & his new bride hosted a wonderful barbecue... I got to meet him, his friends, his family... and like all great parties, it involved a lot of beer & Cards Against Humanity. He's also a fellow Jeep owner... so he's obviously a bad ass.

Friday night, while others were out watching the fireworks (it was really foggy where we were in the Presidio) we instead spent our time... playing with our new Food Dehydrator... and we dehydrated strawberries, oranges & honeydew... and they were pretty amazing... and only took a few hours to dry them out & preserve them. Why do this? Well, fruits expire quickly... these don't. Also, down the road, we will probably want to involve them in a nice homebrew experiment... like adding them in secondary fermentation to get some of that sweetness into the brews even when the fruits are out of season... but that's for another entry.

We also started marinating for what we really got the food dehydrator for... JERKY!!! This first entry was to be a Cherry Pepsi Spicy Jerky recipe that we found... and so far so good, but it takes a few days for end results. Fun fact about food dehydrators: The smells coming out of them are amazing... either potpourri if it's fruit, etc... or like a smokehouse if it's jerky. Good times.

Saturday morning, we stopped by the store & found a new Sierra Nevada Beer Camp Variety Pack which was a mix of 12 collaborative brews with some other great breweries... and the beer was great. Some of the real highlights are two bocks (tropical & rye), Coffee Milk Stout & the Imperial Dark Ale... but all of them are pretty good thus far. Try them out while you can. Spoiler: It's going to cost about twice as much as a standard twelve pack.

After starting up some beer bratwursts marinated in our red ale, we then transferred our Bock from the primary fermenter which he had kept fairly cool (about 45-50 degrees in our sleeve mentioned two weeks ago) to an empty keg so that we can put it in the kegerator & keep it about ten degrees colder for lager fermentation. About the most interesting thing out of this transfer... was what happened when it was nearly full... and the foam started to rise...

While transferring, we also started up JJ's award-winning recipe for California Common... and it smelled amazing... and we actually got a great sparge this time around (we've had all-grain mistakes in the past) so we're really excited about this one. About the only mistake thus far... we forget to add the gypsum or whirfloc tablet for clarity... but hell, I'm okay with dirty flavorful beer. Cold crashing will help out too... but here are pictures...

Izzy also made some Spent Grain Bread and it turned out pretty amazing...

After all that, we were pretty exhausted... and this next week should be pretty exciting but I'll save all that for next time. Have a great weekend everybody!!!

Winter Warmer & Honey Root Beer

Good Afternoon Ladies & Gentlemen,

 
First & foremost, I wanted to show some of the logo ideas that we're going with thus far... and I'm really liking the "Dilophosaur" (unless you're a dinosaur nerd like me) on the left hand side... 

 

Saturday was a Brew Day!!! Dizzy & I woke up, none of the roommates were around… so we decided to start up our next batch of delicious brew…

 

The Winter Warmer

 

Basically it appears to be a bit of a brown ale with darker grains so that it’s primarily for sipping by the fireplace & warming the cockles of your heart while you enjoy family time. Of course, because none of the roommates were around mid-day on a Saturday and it was a perfect time to do it… they immediately showed up as soon as all of the stuff was getting sanitized in the kitchen. Oh well… it happens… and luckily they didn’t really need the kitchen other than to warm a few things up for lunch, etc. Yes… it’d be nice to have a garage or something to do the homebrewing in… but you work with what you have… and frankly, it’s not a bad situation at all. Maybe it’s just that I worry too much about being in my roommates’ ways… but I’ll get over it. They know how it goes. Anyway… we started with sanitizing the equipment… and then sparging out those delicious sugars for our wort…

 

 

Sparge the first bit... then put it back in so you get the good stuff...

Spent grains make good fertilizer...

even though we really don't care...

I'm guessing the birds don't mind

Add the hops...

Sanitize, sanitize, sanitize...

Now, we’re beginners with the mash-tun… and apparently we have a little learning to do. See… apparently what happens if that you have to make sure that you have enough water to sparge out all the goodies. If you’re making 5 gallons, then you’d think 5 gallons would be enough… and you’d be WRONG!!! The grains that you’re pulling the sugars from are all dried out, cracked to expose their innards, so you really have to calculate the amount of water that you use to get a desired amount of liquid through there. The dried grains will obviously rehydrate with the addition of the hot waters, some of the gelatinous qualities act up and basically, depending on the amount of grains used (in this case, about 12 pounds) we should’ve used somewhere in the range of 8-9 gallons of hot water for the total sparge to get the desired 5 gallons.

 

However, we didn’t really do a lot of calculations beforehand… so I think we only used about 7-8 gallons of sparge water… so we only ended up with about 3.5 gallons of wort when it was all said and done. Take into account the evaporation from the hour-long boil for the hops… and we basically ended up with three gallons of Winter Warmer for the primary fermenter. Not a complete loss obviously… but definitely could’ve used an extra two gallons. Rookie mistake that we’ll certainly learn from… and that’s why you live… so that you can learn.

 

 

From this point, the process will still basically be the same despite the lower amount of wort. We still add yeast, primary fermenting, secondary fermenting, bottling, and it should be ready in about six weeks. The best part about learning of this now… is that we’ll definitely have enough water ready for our next batch… which is our Oktoberfest batch… which I’m personally really excited about because I LOVE German biers. Also, we got a little bored trying to cool the hot wort as fast as possible... so we decided to take some pictures of melting ice like we're filming a glacier documentary like "Chasing Ice" and here are the results...

 

Another added bonus of the mashing & sparging… is that we then have a few pounds of extra “spent” well-hydrated grains that we can use for things like making bread. With just a few eggs, some flour, olive oil, etc. We took some of those grains that we would’ve just given away or thrown on the lawn as compost… and turned them into delicious high-fiber bread for… well, anything bread is used for. Sandwiches, snacks, soaking up beer, whatever. It’s really good stuff… and you can even dress it up more if you like by adding raisins and other things that people unnecessarily add to good old fashioned bread.

 

Honey Root Beer

 

Since we had the stuff out, we also decided to make a batch of Honey Root Beer. What makes it Honey Root Beer? Well, we used some delicious honey as the sugar instead of standard cane or corn sugar in the recipe. Here are some pictures before the process… honey on the bottom, extract & water on top...

 

This batch should be ready in a week which is perfect for our Bacon & Beer Day Celebration this Saturday!!! You know, a magnificent alternative for those who don’t want to have a bunch of homebrews, may not be of age (though I don’t know why they’d be hanging out with us), or just to try a twist on a classic. We’ll keep you posted.

 

Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King Day by going to downtown Santa Rosa to try out a delicious sampler of beer at Russian River Brewing Company. During last weekend’s adventure, we didn’t really have suitable time to experience it… but we did this time. They were still pretty busy despite being just after noon when we arrived… but we got some Drew Bites (like a little pepperoni & peppercini pizza cut into little bites) and THIS SAMPLER!!!

 

 

There was also this car parked nearby...

Bay Area... it's what we do...

The beer was magnificent! We highly recommend it! The service was a little slow… but they were really busy, still pretty nice though. I just kinda had to make things happen to get the order in, get a check, and to help out… I even went & got my own drinks at the bar. I’m cool with it… but you just may not be expecting it.

 

Have a great day everybody!!! We’ll see you next weekend with a report on our Bacon & Beer Day Celebration!!!